Yesterday I purchased a program for converting some video files I had to flash video so I could embed them on my QuickIMVideos blog. The program works great, not the reason for this post.

The problem was the ordering process for the program itself. On the first page there was a checkbox for a add on of the program on CD, shipped to my house. It was pre-checked. I get to the next step and sure enough there was $8 tacked on to my bill. Okay, not cool, but I go back and uncheck the box. Hit the next page and no extra charges, looking good…

Read the rest of this entry

  convert this post to pdf

The Triggers of Success: How to Trigger a Successful Sale
through the Power of Psychological Triggers

By Joseph Sugarman - Psychological Triggers

A desire to buy something often involves a subconscious
decision. In fact, I claim that 95% of buying decisions are
indeed subconscious.

Knowing the subconscious reasons why people buy, and using this
information in a fair and constructive way, will trigger
greater sales response — often far beyond what you could
imagine…

Read the rest of this entry

  convert this post to pdf

Discover a Master Wordsmith’s Secret for Turning Everything You
Say into Wealth, Well-Being and Personal Success
By Ted Nicholas

You might think this strange, but every day, before I start
work, I stand up, look to the sky, throw my hands in the air,
and shout out loud: “I feel terrific!”

This is what I call an ‘affirmation’ — positive self-talk to
charge up my emotions and help me produce my very best work. An
affirmation can be as simply as “YES!”…as uplifting as “I’m
very happy at this moment!”…or as determined as “I’m willing
to do whatever is necessary to succeed!”

Try it for yourself right now. Choose a positive message you
want to tell yourself. Then stand up, put your head back, throw
your arms up, and shout it out loud. Makes you feel
uncomfortable? Good! You’ve just discovered how powerful
words can be.

Unlimited Success & Wealth are All In the Words You Use

Read the rest of this entry

  convert this post to pdf

How to Hypnotize People into Reading Your Sales Materials!
by Joe Vitale

On a sunny, warm day in August, 1996 I kneeled over the grave of
P.T. Barnum and had one of the most remarkable experiences of my
life.

I had begun researching the famous showman in order to write my
forthcoming new book, There’s a Customer Born Every Minute (to
be released in October, 1997). I had visited the Barnum Museum,
the Historical Library in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and met with
Barnum scholars, biographers, and collectors of his writings. I
wanted to visit Barnum’s grave and pay my respects. Little did I
know that the incredible, magical experience would change my
life forever…

Read the rest of this entry

  convert this post to pdf

How to Close More Online Sales Through the Magic of Questions
by Brian Tracy - 24 Techniques for Closing the Sale

No one can deny that sales closing techniques are absolutely
vital in face-to-face selling. But often, people ask me if they
can apply my powerful closing techniques to online marketing. My
answer is an unequivocal, “Yes!”

Of course, there are some closing techniques that are more
applicable to the Web than others — but I’ll show you magical
closing secrets that can dramatically increase your web sales,
and rapidly increase your online income. This works best on
direct response websites - i.e., those that focus on getting an
immediate response in the form of an order or lead.

Before we get started, I must emphasize that much of the sale is
made in the presentation. The close is largely determined by how
well you’ve presented the product to the prospect. Your
objective, then, is to take the prospect smoothly past the point
of closing, making it easy for him or her to come to a buying
decision. You can accomplish this with the strategic use of
questions.

The All-Important Opening Question

When you’re selling online, you don’t have the benefit of
interacting with your prospect the way you would in face-to-face
selling. Therefore, the first thing you say in your web copy has
to be something that breaks preoccupation, grabs attention, and
points to the result or benefit of the your product.

At any given moment, your prospect’s mind is preoccupied with
dozens of things. Therefore, a well-crafted question will cause
the prospect’s thinking to be directed to what you have to say.

Your opening question must be aimed at something that is
relevant and important, and at something that your prospect
needs or wants. What do sales managers, for instance, sit around
and think about all day long? Increasing sales! Therefore, if
your target market consists of sales managers, here’s an example
of a question you can use as a headline or as the first part of
your copy: “How would you like to see a method that would enable
you to increase your sales by 20% to 30% over the next 12
months?”

When you ask such a question, the first thing that pops into the
mind of the prospect should be, “What is it?” - whereupon you’ve
captured his or her attention, and you can then begin to
articulate how your product or service can solve the need posed
by the question.

Plan your opening question carefully. If your opening question
fails to break your prospect’s preoccupation and grab his
attention, he will click away before giving you the opportunity
to present your product or service.

Questions That Keep Them Involved

Questions are equally vital during the presentation, i.e., in
the body of your web copy, for clearly explaining how your
product or service solves your prospect’s problem in an easy,
fast, or cost-effective way. Therefore, install questions
within your sales copy that capture attention. Keep your
prospect involved, and keep his mind from wandering off in a
different direction by using intriguing questions that grab his
lapels and jerk him toward you. For the length of time that it
takes a prospect to answer a question in his mind, you have his
total attention. The prospect is drawn more and more into the
sales process as your questioning proceeds. If your questions
are logical, orderly and sequential, you can lead the prospect
forward toward the inevitable conclusion to purchase your
product or service.

Tip: Never say something if you can ask it instead! Think of how
you can phrase your key selling points as questions. The person
who asks questions has control!

Closing Questions that Presume the Sale

Just as questions are important at the beginning and the body of
your web copy, they are even more vital at the end in gaining a
commitment to action.

The key to asking a closing question is confident expectation.
You must skillfully craft your question to convey that you
confidently expect the prospect to say, “Yes” or to agree to the
sale.

For example, you can pose the following question in your web
copy: “When would you like to start using HERE> to multiply your profits?” In other words, you don’t ask
if they want to buy your product, but when. This way, you’re
asking for the sale expectantly, and the more confidently you
expect to sell, the more likely it is that you will sell.

Tip: In crafting your closing question, include the benefit that
your prospect will get from your product.

When you ask a compelling closing question, you diffuse the
tension that normally creeps up on your prospect at the “moment
of truth.” A prospect’s tension leads to the hesitance that
kills so many sales - both online and offline.

To be truly persuasive in the selling process, learn to use
questions judiciously throughout your web copy. Instead of
trying to overwhelm your prospects with reasons and rationales
for doing what you want them to do, ask strategic questions
instead. When you take the time to plan the wording of your
questions, your prospect will become more interested in your
product — and consequently, you will make more sales.

Brian Tracy is a million-dollar master of peak sales performance
and personal success strategies. As the world-renowned creator
of 300 video and audio learning programs, and the best-selling
author of 16 books, his ideas and approaches are used by most of
the big money makers and the superstars of selling. In his
RealVideo course, “24 Techniques for Closing the Sale,” Brian
shows you powerful tactics that can double or triple your sales
closing rate — and teach you how to sell 50% to 100% of all
prospects that you come in contact with — all in just 63
minutes.

  convert this post to pdf

The E-Factor: Two Ways to Instantly Get More Back from Every
Promotion - by David Garfinkel - Killer Copy Tactics

Allow me to introduce you to the mysterious “E-Factor.” It’s
mysterious because it has two meanings.

Both meanings will help you get more business from any promotion
you do. So without further ado, here’s how you can use the
“E-Factor” to make more money:

- Put “E-Factor” in your testimonials and copy

Did you realize the very best source of new business is almost
always a prospect who has been referred to you by a friend or
trusted business advisor? It is. Think about this in your own
life. When you need an accountant, or an attorney, or a doctor,
or for that matter a hardware store in a new town, you’ll
probably turn to someone you know, whose judgment you trust, to
refer you to the service or product provider you’re looking for.

OK. But what does that have to do with direct mail and Web
promotions?

A lot. People are always on the lookout for sources of advice
they can trust. However, since you can’t always rely on giving
every prospect for your business personal recommendations from
the prospect’s friends, neighbors and advisor’s they actually
know and trust, you do the next best thing: You give them copy
with recommendations from people who seem like the people they
know and trust.

How? By putting testimonials and case studies in your copy
involving people who will fill the role of trusted friends and
advisor’s.

Many marketers do this but they don’t get the desired effect.
Why? Because they haven’t put enough productive effort into the
research that pays off. This is in-person research - especially
one-on-one “casual” research, as opposed to formal focus-group
research - with their actual customers, and people who are a lot
like their customers.

This high-payoff research gives you in-depth working
understanding of how your prospects think and act in the world -
and how they look at things and make decisions. When you have
this understanding and you weave it into the language of your
descriptive copy and your testimonial quotes, it’s called
“empathy.”

“Empathy” - that’s the first meaning of “The E-Factor.”
Increase empathy in your copy and you’ll increase sales.

- Profit from the second meaning of the “E-Factor” as well

There’s another, equally important meaning. Before I tell you
what it is, let me give you a big, fat hint. In his book The
Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces Are Transforming
Our Lives, author Michael J. Wolfe points out that American
consumers put 8.4% - about one dollar out of every 12 - into
some form of entertainment. Currently, that adds up to $480
billion a year.

As a side note, Hollywood productions - films and TV shows -
bring in the second largest amount of money from overseas back
into the U.S. economy, after aircraft sales.

Yes, the other meaning of the “E-Factor” is entertainment. It’s
huge. And it applies to marketing and selling. As the late
(and great) David Ogilvy reminded us, “People will not be bored
into buying.”

But beware. Many a copywriter less talented and, more
importantly, less thoughtful than Mr. Ogilvy has made the fatal
error including humor, fantasy, drama or thrills in a promotion
in such a way as to not specifically move the sales process
forward.

And that’s dangerous. Even deadly, sometimes. Here’s why: When
you include entertainment, people’s attention will invariably be
drawn to it over anything else. And when entertainment does not
directly support moving the sale forward, then it automatically
detracts from the sale.

There are dozens of examples. The lying Isuzu salesman. Sales
went down. “Plop-plop, Fizz-fizz.” Sales went down. I’m sure
you have your favorites of entertaining ad campaigns that
bombed. Now you know why.

Entertainment isn’t bad. But not painstakingly linking the
entertainment to the forward motion of the sale is bad. Very
bad.

So, how do you add entertainment value in such a way as to
increase the sales effectiveness of your promotion? Several
ways:

- Tell a dramatic story where your product is the hero and
saves the day for the human involved. My favorite example of
this is the newspaper ad for Joe Karbo’s legendary book “The
Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.”

In the ad, Mr. Karbo talks about his “Lazy Man’s Way” which he
promises to reveal in the book he’s selling. He tells how,
before he knew the “Lazy Man’s Way,” he used to work 18-hour
days, 7-day weeks and was still perpetually in debt. But after
he learned the “Lazy Man’s Way,” he became financially
independent by working less and in fact became very wealthy.

This incredible ad combines drama with sales power in an
unbeatable way. And it worked! The ad sold 3 million books by
mail order!

- Use humor that adds emphasis to the value of your product or
service. When you get past the laughter, most humor in ads just
shows off the cleverness of the creative team who created the
ad. (You might say it also shows off their lack of concern for
creating sales.) A positive example, where the humor shows how
the product is so worthwhile, is the old (and very successful)
series of Seinfeld commercials for the American Express Card.

- Use exciting, colorful language in testimonials when
customers are talking about the virtues of your product. But
make sure it’s believable. And don’t make fun of the fact that
you’re selling something, any more than you would go to target
practice and fire the first shot into your own foot. At all
times, keep your eye on the target - increased sales!

So let’s review. How can you use this information to make more
sales in every promotion? Take stock of its Empathy and
Entertainment Value. Be single-minded. Take out everything
that takes away from the sale, and keep in - or boost and
strengthen - everything that furthers the sale. Build the
strongest possible promotion at every point along the way - and
watch your response rate soar!

© 2000 David Garfinkel. All rights reserved. David Garfinkel
is widely recognized by many “marketing gurus” as their secret
weapon. That is, he is known as “The World’s Greatest
Copywriting Coach”; because, he can, like no other, teach you
how to turn words into cash. David is also the author and
narrator of Killer Copy Tactics, the Web’s first and only
totally interactive audio/visual learning system for writing
Killer Copy Tactics.

You can learn more about this course at: Killer Copy Tactics

  convert this post to pdf